Weekend Box Office Report: ‘Jurassic World’ Has the Biggest Opening of All Time

UPDATE: With the final numbers officially in, our prediction from the original article has come to pass – Jurassic World had the biggest box office opening of all time with $209 million domestic and $511 million internationally. The original article follows below.

Everyone knew that Jurassic World was going to open big, but no one saw this coming. The fourth film in the beloved dinosaur-centric franchise had the second biggest domestic opening of all time, the biggest June opening of all time, and, with $511 million worldwide, the biggest international opening of all time. It also broke a bunch of records that we’ll get to in a few minutes. This was supposed to be the summer of Avengers: Age of Ultron. Unless something goes horribly wrong, this is officially the summer of Jurassic World.

Film

Weekend

Per Screen

1

Jurassic World

$209,000,000

$47,871

$204,000,000

2

Spy

$16,000,000 (-45.0)

$5,039

$56,937,000

3

San Andreas

$11,010,000 (-57.4)

$3,115

$119,321,000

4

Insidious: Chapter 3

$7,300,000 (-67.8)

$2,422

$37,371,000

5

Pitch Perfect 2

$6,000,000 (-20.8)

$2,241

$170,715,000

6

Entourage

$4,340,000 (-57.8)

$1,396

$25,870,000

7

Mad Max: Fury Road

$4,130,000 (-47.3)

$1,849

$138,608,000

8

Avengers: Age of Ultron

$3,641,000 (-42.6)

$1,689

$444,743,000

9

Tomorrowland

$3,417,000 (-52.5)

$1,345

$83,607,000

10

Love & Mercy

$1,765,000 (-16.8)

$3,080

$4,774,000

With a weekend gross of $204 million, Jurassic World only trails The Avengers when it comes to biggest openings of all time. And it’s surprisingly close — Marvel’s superhero team-up made $207 million in 2012. For all we know, things may very well shift in favor of Jurassic World when the official numbers arrive tomorrow. That’s insane.

Let’s run down some of the other records Jurassic World has broken so far. It has the highest Saturday gross of all time. It has the highest wide release theater average of all time ($47,871 per theater). It is the fastest film to reach $100 million. It is the fastest movie to reach $150 million. It was barely edged out by The Avengers in the fastest to $200 million race.

It turns out that audiences were really starved for some serious dinosaur action. Sure, Avengers: Age of Ultron is a big hit, but this feels like people were craving a massive event movie that doesn't feature superheroes. What lessons, if any, will Hollywood take from this? Expect a lot of dinosaur movies. And expect a Jurassic World sequel within the next two to three years.

Our early prediction is that Jurassic World will fly past Avengers: Age of Ultron to become the highest grossing film of the summer. We also think that the only film capable of dethroning it this year is Star Wars: The Force Awakens, which opens in December. Unless audiences totally turn on the movie and numbers plummet next week, we could be looking at the newest member of the $500 million club.

Obviously, this weekend was all about Jurassic World, but other movies did exist. Spy took a hefty drop, but $16 million in the face of a juggernaut isn’t bad at all. With $56 million in the bank, the film still has a strong shot at $100 million if word of mouth remains strong (and it is strong). San Andreas also continued to do fine, but its $119 million gross after three weekends looks like peanuts compared to a real blockbuster. More impressive is Love & Mercy, which broke into the top 10 from limited release.

Most of the top 10 consisted of movies just hanging out, collecting their pennies and being thankful that Jurassic World sold out and people took the second option. Pitch Perfect 2, Avengers: Age of Ultron, and Mad Max: Fury Road all continued to do solid business. Insidious: Chapter 3 took a huge 67 percent drop (which is normal for a horror movie), but it’s already made its money back.

However, this weekend was the official death knell for Tomorrowland (which won’t hit $100 million) and Entourage (which won’t hit $50 million). If only they had the foresight to include dinosaurs...